heart." When the memory of persons we dearly loved is connected with the view of those objects, they have then a double link to the soul. It were tender enough for me to view some ancient trees that form my common evening-walk, did I only remember what I was when I first sported under their shade, and what I am when I rest under it now; but it is doubly tender, when I think of those with whom I have walked there; of her whom but a few summers ago I saw beneath those beeches, smiling in health, and beauty, and happiness; her present days lighted up with innocence and mirth, and her future drawn in the flattering colours of fancy and of hope.

But I know not why I should trouble you with this recital of the situation and feelings of an individual, or indeed why I should have written to you at all, except that I catched a sort of congenial spirit from your 87th number, and was led by

the letter of Urbanus, to compare your description of a personage in former times, with those whose sentiments I sometimes hear in the present days. I am not sure that these have gained in point of substance what they have lost in point of imagination. Power, and wealth, and luxury, are relative terms; and if address, and prudence, and policy, can only acquire us our share, we shall not account ourselves more powerful, more rich, or more luxurious, than when in the little we possessed we were still equal to those around us. But if we have narrowed the sources of internal comfort and internal enjoyment, if we have debased the powers or corrupted the purity of the mind, if we have blunted the sympathy or contracted the affections of the heart, we have lost some of that treasure which was absolutely our own, and derived not its value from comparative estimation. Above all, if we have allowed the prudence or the interests

of this world, to shut out from our souls the view or the hopes of a better, we have quenched that light which would have cheered the darkness of affliction, and the evening of old age, which at this moment, Mr Lounger, (for, like an old man, I must come back to myself,) I feel restoring me my virtuous friends, my loved relations, my dearest child!

I am, &c.

ADRASTUS.

you,

THOUGH and other writers of your sort, are constantly recommending benevolence and social affection, as not only the most laudable, but as the happiest dispositions of mind; yet I confess I am inclined to doubt at least one half of the proposition. The care we take of our neighbours is oftener praised than rewarded, and sometimes it has the misfortune to meet neither with approbation nor recompense. That I have some reason to

say so, Mr Lounger, I fancy you will be inclined to allow, when I tell you how it has fared with myself.

I was, from my earliest years, disposed to think more of other people's advantage than of my own. When at school, I was the great prompter both of study and of amusement; though I was nowise remarkable for excelling in the one, or enjoying the other. I shewed the first boys of our class the easiest way of getting their lessons, and performing their exercises; but I seldom could be at the trouble to get or to perform my own. I laid excellent plans for new games, truant expeditions, and little plots of mischief; but, being of a weakly constitution, and of not a very resolute mind, I seldom was an actor in the amusement or the adventure: as I had, however, a sort of vanity, which was flattered by the imputation of the advice, I was often flogged for tricks I had not played, and idle diversions in which I had